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HOW MANY DAYS
HAVE PASSED?
BOB SEAL RECALLS
HIS CLEAR LIGHT DAYS
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So how did it all begin, what where your influences and inspiration to take up guitar?
I had taken piano and trumpet lessons as a kid but they didn’t stick, I had always loved R &B and blues, and Rock n Roll when it came out, and I listened to it avidly. As far as guitarists were concerned probably Chet Atkins, and Chuck Berry destroyed my soul, Chuck Berry just absolutely pulled me apart, I had never heard anything like that in my life. When I heard that I knew that was what I wanted to do. I started off with an acoustic guitar which was just terrible, I wound up breaking it across my knee after it cut my fingers up real bad, then for $25.00 I bought from a pawn shop a Sears Robuck electric guitar. I played that for a few years until I finally got a Gibson. I was playing with various pick up bands in clubs around Georgia.
So shortly after that time you headed west, hooking up with Dallas along the way, and you both made your way to California, eventually meeting Robbie Robison.
Yes, we ended up at Manhattan Beach. If it hadn’t been for Robbie there wouldn’t have been a Clear Light, I met him in a club and we told him about what we were trying to do and he said “I’ve got an apartment out there and I’m writing songs with a drummer.” So we teamed up, if it hadn’t been for that we wouldn’t have put the band together the way it was.
You started off as the Garnersfield Sanitarium, what sort of material were you performing, was there anything that you had written then that ended up on the album?
We were just starting to try to write, we knew that what we wanted to do was write our own stuff but at that point we were doing stuff by the Hollies, Mamas and Papas, whatever was happening. We picked things that had good vocals in them, we knew right then that we wanted to have a lot of vocals.
At that point it was just you and Robbie on guitars and Dallas and Mike on drums along with Wanda Watkins on vocals, that must have been an unusual sound you were making then, not having a bassist.
Our first priority was to get a bass. Bud said I’ve got this kid living in my basement and he plays bass all night to records on the record player and you might want to take a look at him. We did, and although he didn’t have the experience level we were looking for, he just had so much musical talent we just went ahead and hired him because he could sing and he was writing and he was a good bass player.
What happened to Wanda Watkins, how did she come to leave the group?
I think we felt like she didn’t really write, and we wanted writers. She was a good person and she was willing but she didn’t really fit.
Bud Mathis was your manager at that point, how much of an influence was he on the way the group developed at that time?
He was a good guy and he did us some good, he got us an audition with Elektra. One of the saddest things I have ever gone through in this business, they said he’s not really heavyweight enough for you guys, you got to get rid of him. They talked us into it and I am still ashamed that I went along with it.
Robbie was quite a character by all accounts; he certainly cut a striking figure on the Clear Light album sleeve.
Robbie could do anything. One time in Sausalito he walked into our apartment and he had these squares of leather he had bought, and he had some scissors and some of that whipcord you make sails with, and needles. He laid that leather out on the floor and took some chalk and he took those scissors and he cut that shit up and he sewed it together in front of us and walked out wearing a leather suit that fit him perfectly. It looked great; it had fringes and everything, all done by eye. There was nobody like him, we found out later he was suffering from a kind of vitamin deficiency that made his nerves go crazy, but except for that he was the sweetest gentlest guy you ever saw in your life. It’s just when he got hungry he had a Jekyll and Hyde thing, but he wasn’t mean or hurtful, just anxious.
Of course he was married to Barbara Robison from the Peanut Butter Conspiracy during his time with Clear Light.
Barbara was a lovely person and a wonderful singer. The PBC were a great band. We were really good friends with them, in fact it was Alan Brackett that gave us the name Garnersfield Sanitarium
You played the first Love-In at Griffith Park in Easter 1967, which must have been a contrast to the days of playing small clubs like the Sea Witch.
That was quite a gig, 30,000 people there, the Steve Miller Band played along with Lowell George and his group the Factory.
Dallas had played with the Factory for a while too.
Yes he had, in their early days.
Part of the deal with Elektra was the Clear Light house at 5215 Franklin Avenue, close to the Observatory at Griffith Park. I heard this was a popular place for groups to come by and rehearse and jam due to the soundproofing you guys had made with egg cartons and stuff, can you recall any of the groups that used to hang out there with you?
Tandyn Almer the guy who wrote Along Comes Mary used to come round often, Flo and Eddie from the Turtles and The Peanut Butter Conspiracy of course. The Doors used to come by a lot, mostly it was just John Densmore on a regular basis, and sometimes Ray and Robbie and sometimes all of them would come and jam with us at the house. Those guys were good guys, with Jim it depended on whether he had been drinking or not, but they were good to be around. Robbie was a real sweet kid; he played with his fingers he didn’t use a pick, he just had so much talent.
It must have been a great place to live in.
Yeah it was. We used to have this great mini jungle in the front yard off to one side of the house where the photograph for the album cover was taken.
It was also around this time that you filmed your appearance in the movie “The President’s Analyst,” how did that come about?
We knew agent who used to work for Bob Hope and that led us to getting an audition for the President’s Analyst; we beat out 400 bands to get that part.
I heard that the Grateful Dead were the main group you were up against for that part.
I love the Dead; I loved Jerry Garcia he was a great classy act. I played several hours with him at the Avalon one time. We had played the Fillmore and I had gone out on the town and I came in that night-club and I had my guitar. He was up there with Spencer Dryden and Phil Lesh and they were just jamming and he invited me up to play with them. We started playing and I noticed the people who were sweeping the floor stopped sweeping and came up and clustered around the front of the stage and started watching. Jerry was just so giving and supportive I couldn’t believe it, he just got underneath me and made me play like I didn’t even know I could play. A sweet guy if ever there was one.
I also heard the Dead were influenced into getting a double drummer set up after hearing Clear Light play.
So did the Allman Brothers too.
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